


Red Right Hand

by mochroimanam



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, OT5 Friendship, Possession
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-04-16 21:27:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4640799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mochroimanam/pseuds/mochroimanam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The flickers in the corners of his eyes were getting more tangible, and he gripped his fingers harder into the limestone of the bridge’s wall. Whispers seemed to shiver up from the river; the usual night sounds of frogs and insects eclipsed by them. His senses were like a television set being tuned – snippets of sound and light made meaningless by interrupted frequencies. <i>What is happening to me?</i></p><p> </p><p>What if the distortions of reality that Adam was experiencing in TDT weren’t because of Cabeswater, but something much more sinister? AU that takes off about a third of the way through TDT.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue

Tonight, the dream forest was a twisted mass of shadow.

Ronan walked barefoot beneath the dark figures of skeletal oaks and ageless sycamores. The ground was scattered with dry twigs and leaves, ripe for crunching, but if he imagined himself lighter, he could slip across them without any more noise than a soft sigh. It felt important to be soundless tonight.

The mountain creaked beneath him like a glacier shifting, heavy and slow. He felt watched. Not in the way the trees usually observed him, with their ancient, breathing presence, but as if by something else, something that seemed to shift between the trees at the corners of his vision. Ronan ducked his head as an icy breeze sent a fresh rain of leaves to the forest floor and hurried faster, although he wasn’t sure of his destination.

Up ahead, a rocky stream shimmered in the starlight. Ronan waded into it, the water reaching halfway up his calves. It was an oddly comfortable temperature, like a shallow pond that had been steeped in sunlight, and the silt at the bottom was soft on the soles of his feet. Ronan bent down, letting the water run into his cupped hands, and splashed it over his face. Tiny minnows that seemed to glow from within darted past his ankles.

“ _Ronan!_ ” His name was a hissed whisper on the breeze, and for a moment, Ronan wasn’t sure whether it was the trees or the movement of the brook that had called to him. Then his eyes caught on a dark shape on the bank. Crouching beneath a fallen tree that crossed the water was Orphan Girl. “Ronan,” she whispered again, urgently, and Ronan waded closer.

The girl’s arms were streaked with mud, and as Ronan got near enough to make out detail, he could see stripes of tears shining on her narrow face. “It’s here.” Her hand came up, fingers uncurling in a gesture that seemed to encompass the entire forest. She looked impossibly small next to the fallen oak.

Ronan looked around, eyes scanning the shadows beneath the trees around the stream, ready to defend, to flee. Nothing made itself known to him. “ _Quid est_?”

Orphan Girl shook her head, pressing a violently trembling finger to her lips. The whites of her eyes shone in the moonlight as her gaze darted to the trees.

A twig snapped. The sound stabbed at the bubble of silence around them. Orphan Girl scrambled further under the trunk of the fallen log like a vole trying to escape the shadow of a hawk.

 _There’s nothing there_ , Ronan told the dream, the same way he turned wasps to ladybugs. Orphan Girl shut her eyes and covered her ears as another, larger-sounding branch crunched like a bone. _It’s a deer_ , Ronan thought, changing tactics, but his pulse was pounding in his throat. _Fucking Bambi, come on_.

The current around his legs seemed to intensify suddenly, and he found he couldn’t move his legs. It wasn’t unlike when he could hear the night horrors coming for him, that sense of imminent devouring madness, when he’d lost total control of a dream and had to sprint toward wakefulness with everything he had. But this was different. This thing in the trees wasn’t _his_ the way the night horrors were.

The girl was digging at the mud of the bank now, and Ronan could hear her heavy breaths. She pulled something small and round and glittering from the dirt. “Take it,” she whispered roughly, pressing it into his hand. “ _Praesidium_.”

Although the sphere had come from the earth, it was completely clean. It felt alive in Ronan’s hand. For some reason he thought of his father’s mask.

And then he woke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quid est? - what is it?  
> praesidium - protection
> 
> I've got 7,000 words of this written so far, and plan to update fairly regularly; I'd recommend subscribing if you like it!


	2. on a gathering storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Power. And terror. Together, an incredibly deadly force. A blow to the brain. 
> 
> And they were coming for him. Or from within him. All Adam knew is that he was at once both powerless and powerful, a contradiction of fear and absolute certainty.

_3:13 a.m._

After he’d shivered away the last of the dreaming paralysis, Ronan rolled onto his back. The dream object was cradled in the palm of his hand, warm to the touch, and Ronan unwrapped his fingers to examine it more closely. The transparent glass sphere was about two inches in diameter, and contained a small, kaleidoscopic flame, burning vibrantly despite lack of oxygen. Ronan couldn’t decide whether it was actually changing color; flowing through the spectrum too rapidly for his eyes to understand, or if it was remaining one dynamic, impossible color. Unlike the puzzle box, Ronan had no idea what it was _for_. 

The flickering light cast strange shadows on the walls and bare concrete of the floor. It was a warm night, and despite having shoved the rusted factory window out as far as it would go, propping it open with a haphazardly balanced piece of plywood, the lack of breeze made the air inside and outside Monmouth the same waxy, oppressive texture. Ronan peeled off his sweaty tank top in an attempt to alleviate the feeling, jostling his still-blaring headphones off as he went, and he flopped back down on the unforgivably warm sheets in disgust. His veins were buzzing like flies on fresh meat.

The details of the dream kept battering at him, driving him further and further toward furious wakefulness. How wrong the forest had felt. How terrified the girl had been. The presence of something so tremendously _other_.

Ronan was acutely aware of his still pounding heart, of his perspiration, of the unfair warmth of the dream sphere against his arm. Of course he would dream up fire in this midst of wretched heat. 

There was a sliver of light from the larger room showing beneath his door, and Ronan got to his feet, cracking his neck. Chainsaw made a quiet sound from her perch, and Ronan ran a finger down her feathered back before opening the door.

Gansey sat at his desk, the circle of light cast by the small iron lamp making him look like a studious monk in a Baroque painting. He was wearing his wire frames and valiantly squeezing more notes into the margins of an ancient book that someone more scholarly than Ronan might describe as a tome. Ronan recognized it as the one that had an inscription in Ronan’s handwriting reading “Property of Dick” on the inside cover.

“Catch,” Ronan said, and Gansey looked up just in time to snatch the carelessly lobbed dream sphere from the air before it hit him in the head. 

“Jesus.” Gansey rolled the dream object in his hand with interest, the same way a geologist might examine a particularly rare mineral. “Does it do anything besides defy the laws of geophysics?”

Ronan shrugged. “Pretty paperweight?”

“Just like Gansey,” said a soft voice from the model of Henrietta. Noah was sitting on Main Street, pushing a piece of warped cardboard back into place. He was discolored, faded like an old t-shirt in the washed out light of Gansey’s desk lamp, but at least he was visible. Ronan walked over to Gansey’s rumpled bed and flopped against the footboard, his feet on Gansey’s pillow. Gansey made a face. 

From outside (and very likely from inside as well, since they didn’t exactly have properly sealing doors and windows), the chirp of crickets was deafening. Cicadas competed with them, humming in the still night like high-speed drills through steel. Ronan’s skin _itched_ , his formless anger dripping acid down his spine. 

“Can’t sleep,” Gansey said, and the question was odd, considering how often they were both regularly awake in the still hours before dawn. Their mutual insomnia wasn’t something that needed to be commented on or offered up to platitudes, it just was. But something about this night felt so off, so electric and jarring, that Ronan refrained from flipping Gansey off and instead just stared up at the steel beams of the ceiling. It hadn’t really sounded like a question, anyway. _Can’t_ sleep. An acknowledgement. Gansey felt it too. 

Ronan ran a hand through his slightly too long hair and thought about buzzing it. Thought about finding the keys to the BMW that he’d lost somewhere in the piles of shit in his room, thought about cracking open a beer or seven, thought about collecting a couple more speeding tickets. Thought about showing up at Adam’s apartment and disturbing his already-too-short night of sleep, thought about going to the forbidden Barns and shaking his mother awake, thought about texting Kavinsky with a taunt and a meeting place.

He heard Gansey get up, make the exhaling noise he always did when he stretched after a long bout of research, heard him go still as he took in Ronan’s leg jiggling against the mattress, his muscles tense under his skin. Gritting his teeth, Ronan waited for Gansey to start in on him. He didn’t need to hear it right now, didn’t need the other boy’s mothering. 

“Let’s go get pie,” Gansey said from close by, and Ronan blinked in surprise, swiveling his head to look up at Gansey. Gansey’s eyebrows were raised in invitation. “What do you say?”

Nowhere in Henrietta served pie at three in the morning. Hell, nowhere in Henrietta served anything after eight p.m. on a weekday, other than the ubiquitous 24-hour convenience store where they got their usual late night orange juice. What Gansey was really offering was a 45-minute drive to the nearest city, a chance to escape the sticky, stale air of the town. Even Gansey’s bullshit ‘no-more-than-five-above-the-speed-limit’ ‘hands-at-ten-and-two’ ‘get-your-hand-off-the-stick-Ronan,’ driving would be preferable to this jangling in his veins.

“’Kay. I’m going like this, though.” Ronan gestured down at his clothing, which was less actual clothing and more just a pair of plain black boxer shorts. Gansey sighed, looking all at once fond and aggravated. “You coming, Noah?”

Noah stood, dusting off jeans that weren’t actually able to get dirty, and nodded. “I’m telling you guys, this place is too creepy to be all alone in at night.” 

Ronan reached over and grabbed Noah’s head, fingers pressing lightly into his skull, turning his head back and forth, making him shake his head no. “You’re the only one haunting us, man.” 

“Still,” Noah said solemnly, the flicker in his eyes reminding Ronan unsettlingly of the way Orphan Girl had watched the forest. “Tonight’s not a good night to be alone.”

  


_3:27 a.m._

Adam was asleep. Dead to the world. He was a muted thing, silent and still in the cold forest of unconsciousness. Not dreaming, just hung like an unlit lantern on the bough of a sleeping oak. 

It should have been peaceful, but it wasn’t. This forest didn’t hold peace. Or even mystery, wonders, speaking trees, and timelessness, the way Cabeswater did.

Gradually, Adam’s heavy, corpse-like, dreamlessness gave way to awareness of two overpowering feelings, which pressed against him as he hung in the darkness. Power. And terror. Together, an incredibly deadly force. A blow to the brain. 

And they were coming for him. Or from within him. All Adam knew is that he was at once both powerless and powerful, a contradiction of fear and absolute certainty. He braced himself as if for a strike, hoping it would never come.

When it did come, mere seconds or hours or millenia later, delivered upon him like a clap of thunder, he woke to find himself paralyzed with the knowledge that it was his own fists that had struck. That would strike.

He was out of bed before he realized, arm connecting with the already-dented box of his bedside table and knocking his lamp to the floor, which burst to brightness, throwing the low-ceilinged room into ribbons of light and shadow. Fear was a sucking chest wound, stealing his breath and the possibility of coherent thought. 

Normally, Adam’s rational mind – planning, logic, necessary emotional suppression – would have taken over by now. He had years of practice, the ability to stifle his panic, anger, anguish with a fist pressed to his mouth until his teeth left furrows in the knuckle. But tonight, a roaring like the wind pulling shingles from the roof filled his ears, deaf and hearing alike. His body was moving, although he was not sure where it was going; now his back was pressed against the wall, now his hand scrambled at the flaking plaster. He was so cold, and he had to leave, had to go where it was safe.

A particularly gasping breath allowed him to take in enough oxygen to work his limbs; somehow he shoved his legs into jeans, and then was crashing through the door and the stairs, unable to wait any longer to escape. His feet scraped on the pavement and he realized he forgot his shoes, forgot his keys, but it didn’t matter because he was running, sprinting away from Henrietta. The thought of how close he was to Monmouth, to Blue, propelled him even faster, and his lungs burned.

He didn’t run from an entity, or a clear and present threat. He ran from the certainty that he _was_ the threat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you ever look at something you've been working on for months and know it needs a lot of editing/rewriting and go eh, fuckit, and post it anyway? :P
> 
> Next time on Red Right Hand (hopefully Ch. 3 will be up in the next week, as it is already written): BLUE WANTS TO KNOW WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON.


	3. past the square, past the bridge, past the mills, past the stacks

_3:25 a.m._

Blue thought it was a little rude of the stars to be shining so brightly on a night like tonight. Normally, she would appreciate the extra brightness of the familiar constellations looking down on her, but tonight it felt too hot to even keep the porch light on, much less be taunted by reminders of extreme temperatures from the sky above. At least the grass of the backyard was cool on her back.

The cup of lemon tea Blue had brewed in an effort to lull herself to sleep had long since gone cold and buggy beside her (it had been too hot for the weather, and far too lemony). Although she’d taken her customary late-night-shower-post-Nino’s shift to scrub the pizza grease from her pores and hair, the muggy air and her sweat made her feel like she hadn’t showered in weeks. 

The night air felt decidedly _off_. Like the telephone lines were broadcasting all the conversations they’d ever had in every language that had ever been spoken to them. It made her feel itchy, deep down in her bones, and she frowned up at the silent, burning stars between the boughs of the beech.

A mosquito buzzed past Blue’s ear, making her hyperaware of every tiny sensation on her bare legs and arms, and she hauled upright, deciding she’d had enough of the great outdoors for one night. She dumped her undrunk tea into the roots of the beech tree and headed back inside. 

At 300 Fox Way, it was likely that on any given night at any time of night, you could find at least one restless woman awake. The house did not so much sleep as nap fitfully between bursts of activity. So it wasn’t a surprise to find Persephone in the kitchen baking lemon granola bars at three-thirty in the morning, but what was surprising was how far along with them she was. In less than the hour Blue had been outside, Persephone had somehow appeared and completed the baking process to the point of pulling the newborn bars out of the oven, despite the fact that Persephone’s baking projects were usually a half-day affair. Blue was impressed. That had to be some kind of personal record.

“I liked your idea, about the lemons,” Persephone said by way of greeting, as though she and Blue were continuing a recent conversation despite not having seen each other since the previous afternoon. “Although I would suggest chamomile as a sleep aid; lemon is stimulating. Would you like one?”

Blue wrinkled her nose; her mouth still tasting like her unsatisfying, apparently energizing tea. “No thanks.” She stood by the table, where Calla’s rune set was scattered, little white stones dusted even whiter with flour from Persephone’s baking venture. She idly considered digging out her history assignment, but being awake when one wanted to be asleep seemed like punishment enough without adding the depressing history of U.S. imperialism. Maybe she could dig out one of Calla’s weird foreign films to pop into the ancient VCR. If people wandering about in fields of windmills didn’t put her to sleep, absolutely nothing would. She began absentmindedly picking up the rune pieces, knowing that by morning half of them would probably be knocked beneath the fridge, ne’er to be seen again, and that would put Calla in a very unpleasant mood. 

Her attention was diverted when Persephone let out a small, “Oh!” in a voice that was much more startled than her usual. Blue turned quickly, worried that she’d burned herself on the baking pan, her mind flashing to the first aid kit in the hall closet – it wouldn’t be the first time. But Persephone was simply staring out the window into the night, still as death. Blue felt a thrill of anticipation as she followed her gaze, not quite sure what she expected to see. The quiet backyard was just as she’d left it, beech tree standing sentinel, no zombies or ax murderers in sight. 

Persephone turned to Blue, eyelids fluttering, and pointed at her. “Drop those.”

It took Blue a second to realize Persephone meant the rune stones in her hand that she’d forgotten she was holding. Obligingly, Blue let them fall to the table. There were three: ᚦ, ᚾ, and ᚨ. Blue didn’t know enough about runes to know the meaning, although she was familiar with the symbols from seeing them tumble out of Calla’s dark hands often enough. Persephone studied them for ten long seconds in which Blue held herself back from asking any questions. Unsurprisingly, these kinds of things always seemed to happen when she was in the room, and Blue had learned to be patient. Persephone finally nodded perfunctorily. “You should go now.”

Blue supposed she shouldn’t be stymied by the words, but stymied she was. “Go?” she asked stupidly. To her room? To the moon? Just _away_?

Persephone stirred the air with her pale hand, a gesture which meant she was either having trouble finding words or deeply concerned. Possibly both. It was hard to tell with her. “These things are never simple.” She pointed at two of the runes, which reminded Blue of a budding thorn and a slanted cross. “ _Thurisaz. Nauthiz._ Power, deception, and conflict. Use of force. It’s why this is urgent.” Despite her small, light voice, the words sent a chill over Blue. Just like with tarot, there were no inherently negative runes; they all meant different things depending on the context. The fact that this is the way they were speaking to Persephone was not a good sign. It was as clear a warning as the red cap on a poisonous mushroom.

“What about the third one?” 

Persephone tapped at the rune that looked like a slanty F. “ _Ansuz_. Communication. It’s what you should do right now.” Then she was drifting away up the stairs, like she’d abruptly lost interest in the conversation.

“Persephone!” Blue hissed, mindful of sleeping relatives. Something was happening and the runes didn’t make sense to her the way they did to Persephone and now Persephone was leaving. It wasn’t like her to be this direct and foreboding with a reading, and it made Blue feel altogether unbalanced.

Persephone paused at the landing only to say, “Call your raven boys. I need to check –” before disappearing without finishing her sentence. Blue threw up her hands and thought about waking Maura, but the urgency of Persephone’s words propelled her toward the phone. Gansey was the only one who had a phone and would reliably answer, so Blue dialed his number, feeling briefly self-conscious about the fact that she nearly had it memorized. Surely she didn’t call him that often. 

She wondered how she would begin to explain Persephone’s message to a half-asleep Gansey, especially since she had essentially nothing to go on other than a vague warning. The phone rang several times, Blue’s guilt at most likely waking Gansey growing with each ring, and when it was answered, at first Blue couldn’t hear anything but a shuffling noise. 

“It’s Blue!” Gansey’s voice. “Take it, I’m driving.” More of a scuffle. 

“I’m not your secretary.” Ronan, sounding caustic, but then it was clear he’d taken the phone after all, because his voice became closer. “What do you want?” 

“Where are you going?” Blue asked, curiosity winning over urgency. 

“Straight to hell. It’ll probably be downright chilly compared to here.” 

Gansey in the background: “See if she wants to come!” 

“Why?” Ronan replied, and now Blue was getting impatient. 

“Why not? Everyone likes pie. JANE! DO YOU WANT TO COME GET PIE WITH US!” Gansey yelled, clearly not trusting Ronan to pass along the message. 

“Ronan, give the phone to Gansey, this is serious.” Blue directed, realizing a second later that this was a surefire way to get Ronan to do nothing of the sort. 

“Well, I would, but the geezer has decided that he needs to obey the rules of the road, and cellular usage is _dangerous_.” 

“Oh, you’re useless,” Blue heard Gansey say, and then there was a sharp thud, like the phone had been dropped. Blue winced, thinking about how Gansey’s phone was likely worth six months of Nino’s paychecks. Probably more, actually. 

Another bit of shuffling, and then there was a different voice altogether. “Hi, Blue.”

“Noah! Good. Listen, Persephone had a premonition, or something, and we need to do something about it, although I don’t have a clue what yet. Are you nearby?” 

“Yep. Just turned onto Cedar. Do you want us to come get you?”

“Yeah, I think you should. Is Adam with you?” Blue didn’t know why he would be, but this night was turning out fairly unpredictable.

“Nope. Should we get him too?” 

Blue hesitated, fingers curling in the phone cord, gaze on the darkness outside. Although sweat continued to drip down her spine, she was curiously cold. “Yes. I think we definitely should.”

 

_3:37 a.m._

Blue was uncharacteristically waiting for them at the curb at 300 Fox Way, looking impatient and frizzed. She scrambled into the backseat before the Camaro had hardly finished pulling to a stop, and when Gansey didn’t immediately pull away, she made an impatient noise like a wet cat. Obligingly, he shifted gears and drove. 

“What’s all this about?” Gansey asked, peering at Blue in the rearview with his eyebrows raised.

“Persephone saw something that seriously freaked her out. I don't know what, exactly, but she told me to go, and to talk to you guys. So here I am.” 

Gansey was still trying to imagine a Persephone that that fit the parameters of “seriously freaked out” and was coming up with a blank before he finished processing the rest of the statement, and he frowned, reaching down to pull a mint leaf from his pocket.

Ronan snickered, and Gansey smacked at his Docs, which had crept up to the dashboard yet again, in danger of marking up the pale grey interior. “She give you anything more to go on than that? Sounds like she was just trying to get rid of you.” 

Gansey could feel Blue’s glare from the back seat. “She also read some stuff in Calla’s runes. The general message was ‘warning, big bad incoming, do something about it.’” 

“Helpful,” Ronan muttered, and Gansey reached over to squeeze his knee. He could sense the usual late night simmering anger just under Ronan’s skin, snapping at the surface, but tonight it seemed even more frenetic. 

Blue ignored Ronan. “Besides, don’t you feel it? There’s something weird in the air.” 

“It feels like a storm.” Noah hadn’t spoken for the past five minutes, and hearing his voice float from the backseat nearly made Gansey jump. He sounded especially spectral tonight. “Like those ones in the summer, when the air gets all staticky and the thunder makes all the dogs bark and car alarms go off and sometimes lightning hits a tree.” 

There was a moment of slightly unnerved silence following this statement. Gansey thought about mentioning that the weather forecast hadn’t mentioned a thing about a storm, but that seemed beside the point. “Well,” he said, and then found he didn’t have a follow-up statement. Ronan made a clicking noise with his tongue and teeth. 

“Let’s just get Adam,” Blue said finally, as if they weren’t already most of the way to his place.

St. Agnes looked stern and forgotten at this time of night. One of the lights that illuminated the steeple had burned out, and the remaining lights cast severe shadows on the spire’s profile. Gansey pulled around to the side where Adam’s apartment was located and parked. Reassuringly, the single-paned window was illuminated by the glow of a lamp inside. Adam was up too, and they could collect him and figure out whatever weird thing was happening all together. 

“I’ll go –” Blue started, but Ronan was already out, slamming the door behind him. They all watched as he ascended the stairs two at a time and opened the door without knocking. 

When several minutes had gone by with no Parrish or Lynch emerging from the apartment, Gansey began to feel the cool trickle of worry in the back of his skull intensifying. It felt like some of Blue’s palpable concern and Ronan’s agitation and Noah’s hollowness had bled into him. “I’m going to go make sure everything is alright,” Gansey said, and got out of the car. 

Blue followed immediately, slamming her door, and Gansey wished everyone would stop slamming the doors of the Pig all the time. “What, like I’m just going to wait in the car for the boys?” she asked hotly.

Gansey held his hand out obligingly, _be my guest_ , and they went side by side up the stairs. Noah watched them from the car, one palm placed on the window, where his fingers left frosty outlines on the glass.

Inside Adam’s apartment, Gansey’s trickle of anxiety turned into a full-blown cascade. The cheap lamp was overturned, collapsed onto the floor like a shooting victim – it was a miracle it hadn’t broken – next to an upended English textbook. The dented cardboard box they had both been resting on was on its side a few feet away. It was easy to see that Adam was not there – the room wasn’t large, and Gansey could see into the empty dark bathroom as well. Ronan was crouched by the mattress on the floor, head down and shoulders stiff. 

Gansey flashed to the memory of waking to find Adam and the Camaro gone from Monmouth; the knowledge that he had left and might not come back. And Gansey was relatively sure the old Adam _hadn’t_ come back that time, not after the sacrifice. 

“Maybe he’s just out for a walk?” Blue said doubtfully. She was picking up the lamp and book, carefully replacing them on the dented box.

Gansey shook his head. The only two pairs of shoes he’d ever seen Adam wear were neatly lined up by the door. “Ronan, check the bed. Are the sheets warm?”

Ronan hesitated, seeming to tense up even more, and slid a hand beneath the covers. It was a strangely intimate gesture, and he pulled his wrist back quickly. “Yeah.”

“Then he can’t have gone far.” Gansey wished he felt as matter-of-fact and assured as he sounded. Ronan stood quickly, pushing past Gansey and skirting around Blue and down the stairs. Blue and Gansey shared a quick look, and Gansey felt sweat trickle between his shoulder blades as nausea turned his stomach. 

Back in the car, Gansey sat with the keys pressed in his fist. He needed a _plan_. Right now, all they seemed to have was a collective sense of disquiet that thickened the longer Adam was missing. “I don’t know where to go,” Gansey admitted. He wondered if Ronan or Noah were also thinking of the trailer park. Blue had never been there, she couldn’t know the sense of desperation and hopelessness that hung over the place, couldn’t easily picture him there, hunched in the kitchen as his father taught him a lesson for leaving. Gansey shoved the keys into the ignition forcefully. That wasn’t plausible. There was a restraining order, after all. He refused to let himself consider it for another second, even though the voice of reason in his head was relentlessly stating _restraining orders only work if the perpetrators choose to obey them_.

Noah spoke up from the backseat, voice muffled like a stereo with the speakers broken. “I think he’s somewhere on the line.” In the rearview mirror, he was barely visible, edges softening and ebbing away, but his brow was furrowed in concentration. “Or at least somewhere that’s _affected_ by the line.” 

Gansey didn’t question this knowledge, though Noah wasn’t usually one for psychic messages, even with his connection to the ether. He still had better insight than the rest of them, except for maybe Adam, now. 

“I wish I could just –“ Blue said, clearly frustrated, and then held out her hand. “Give me your phone.” 

As she dialed, Gansey considered Noah’s words. _Somewhere that’s affected by the line_. There was no way Adam could have gotten as far as Cabeswater or the abandoned church that housed Noah’s bones on foot. But there were two places within walking distance that seemed to be in tune with the pulse of the line, where Gansey had mapped high EMF readings during his explorations. One was a copse of ash trees not too far from Nino’s in the direction they’d come from. The other was an old stone bridge on the outskirts of town, where Gansey had often followed Ronan to in the first few months after his father’s death. His gut twisted. 

Blue stabbed at Gansey’s phone screen with her finger – the line had rung at least 10 times with no answer. They would have to do this without psychic assistance, unless they wanted to backtrack. From the cloudless horizon, Gansey could have sworn he heard the rumble of distant thunder.

Ronan’s fist smashed into the dashboard. “We’re wasting _time_.” 

In the backseat, Noah had disappeared without a sound, and Blue had her arms crossed tight over her chest. Gansey turned the keys in the ignition and the engine coughed to life. “I’ve got an idea.”

 

_3:51 a.m._

The river below Adam coursed like a threat. The stones of the bridge were rough and cool beneath his bare feet, and Adam focused on the feel of them, the shape of the wall beneath his hands. It had taken a considerable amount of effort to keep his body from bolting away from Henrietta, with his mind full of the images he’d woken with, but something about crossing the bridge had lulled him into stillness, allowing him to stop and catch his heaving breath.

Adam had calmed, but only slightly. Panic was a many-toothed beast at his heels, threatening to snap its jaws around his chest at any second, and rationality was as slippery as the rocks below him. Despite the summer heat and the exertion of the running, he was still cold.

The flickers in the corners of his eyes were getting more tangible, and he gripped his fingers harder into the limestone of the bridge’s wall. Whispers seemed to shiver up from the river; the usual night sounds of frogs and insects eclipsed by them. His senses were like a television set struggling for signal – snippets of sound and light made meaningless by interrupted frequencies. 

Adam was abruptly aware that he wasn’t alone. He whirled around, but the bridge behind him and the road beyond were still and empty. From somewhere in the thick oaks along the banks, a raven cawed a harsh laugh that echoed in the heat of the night. Breathing was becoming difficult again, and Adam pressed shaking fists to his eyes. He didn’t want to be alone anymore. But he couldn’t go back – he just couldn’t.

The vision he’d had when he woke up kept replaying in his head - _the hatred brewing and thriving, spewing from him like acid from a burst pipe, his fists bloody, the nameless weapon in his hands_ \- the certainty that not only would it be his fault that his friends would die, but that he would be the sole cause. He was a plant studded with concealed thorns; he was a scorpion waiting beneath the floorboards for the house to sleep. He was a lightning strike.

The vision from the dreaming tree made so much more sense now. 

_It’s you. It’s you. You’ve always known it would be you._ This wasn’t a new fear, the knowledge that his father’s blood ran in his veins, that he’d been raised to flip rage on like a switch and turn it on anyone standing in his way.

And there was nothing he could do about it except to remove the source of the danger. Motivation renewed, heart a cold stone in his chest, Adam turned to keep moving. 

Then Gansey’s voice called his name, and Adam froze, horror a slow wave crashing through him.


End file.
